Top 10: Extreme Cold Expeditions

Nothing fascinates us like the highest, deepest and coldest corners of our world. They defy our understanding simply by existing, challenging the limits of our endurance and bringing out the best and worst in our nature.

The following 10 expeditions into the world’s most frigid environments show that it’s not always the death toll that makes a great story; succeed or fail, the most enduring accomplishments are those that involve meeting hardship and long odds head on without flinching. Even the expeditions that ended badly gave us heroes and proved how preparation, the right tools and the right ride can mean the difference between coming home alive and being served up to your companions as human jerky. With that being said, here are 10 of the most amazing extreme cold expeditions ever taken on by mankind.

Number 10

Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition

1914-1916

Shackleton made many trips to the Antarctic. In 1909, he crossed the Trans-Antarctic mountain range and set foot on the South Polar Plateau, but failed to reach the Pole. "Better a live donkey than a dead lion,” he said, but tried again anyway. This mission, his most famous, was to land on one side of Antarctica, hike to the Pole and cross the remainder of the continent to the other side. Although unsuccessful, the mission is famed for its lack of a serious body count.

Freezing point: In October 1915, the ice closed in around Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, crushing it. The crew escaped with three lifeboats, but were stranded. Shackleton and several others took one 20-foot boat and made an unparalleled attempt to get help, crossing the Drake Passage to South Georgia. After landfall, they hiked an additional 36 hours across the spine of the island to find people and organize a rescue party.

The entire Endurance crew survived and a 10-man mission that was to drop supplies on the other side also became stranded, prompting another rescue by Shackleton.

Number 9

Project Nekton in the Mariana Trench

1960

Located off Guam in the Pacific, the Mariana Trench is the deepest point on Earth; an “underwater Everest” that is deeper than that mountain is high. Using the research vessel Trieste, Jacques Piccard and Lt. Don Walsh of the U.S. Navy hit bottom in January of 1960. Their observations of life in the abyss proved that certain types of vertebrates could live at this extreme depth (almost 36,000 feet) where hydrostatic pressure exceeds 1,000 times the atmospheric pressure at sea level. Some of mankind's most amazing accomplishments...